In MOSES, forces on the system are seperated into nineteen named categories:

• WEIGHT : This is the weight of a portion of the system.
• CONTENTS: The weight of ballast in compartments or fluid in an element.
• BUOYANCY: The buoyancy of a portion of the system.
• WIND : The wind force acting on a portion of the system,
• V_DRAG : The viscous drag acting on a portion of the system. This is the velocity squared term in Morison's equation, the viscous roll damping, or the vicsous drag on a piece with the -CS_CURR option. This can be either an excition due to wave or current, or a damping in still water.
• WAVE : This is the linear exciting force on a portion of the system.
• R_DRAG : The radiation damping due to hydroddynamics or that due to a #DRAG load attribute.
• SLAM : This is the force due to mass transfer into the system; i.e. it is the velocity time the mass flow rate term in the equations of motion.
• CORIOLIS: This is the force due to Coriolis accerleration. It also produces a "slowly varying" force.
• W_DRIFT : This is the nonlinear part of the wave force, or the slowly varying "wave drift force". In MOSES, it does not contain an approxation of the Coriolis force. This is different than most other programs.
• DEFORMATION: This is the force on a body due to deforation of the body. This only occurs when a body has generalized degrees of freedom.
• EXTRA : This is a "extra" force that can be added to produce equilibrium in a given configuration. This is useful to "cover up" modeling errors or errors in the environment.
• APPLIED : This is a true force applied to a portion of the body.
• INERTIA : This is the mass of the body times the acceleration.
• A_INERTIA: This is the added inertia times the acceleration.
• C_INERTIA: This is the inertia of the contents times the acceleration.
• FLEX_CONNECTORS: This is the force due to flexible connectors.
• RIGID_CONNECTORS: This is the force due to rigid connectors.
• TOTAL : This is the sum of all of the other contributions.